hunted the moose-deer. Their birch-bark wigwams peeped from among the
trees, their squaws urged their light canoes over the broad deep harbour,
and their wise men spoke to them of the "happy hunting grounds." The
French destroyed them not, and gave them a corrupted form of Christianity,
inciting their passions against the English by telling them that they were
the people who had crucified the Saviour. Better had it been for them if
battle or pestilence had swept them at once away.

The Mic-Macs were a fierce and warlike people, too proud to mingle with an
alien race--too restless and active to conform to the settled habits of
civilization. Too proud to avail themselves of its advantages, they
learned its vices, and, as the snow-wreaths in spring, they melted away
before the poisonous "fire-water," and the deadly curse of the white man's
wars. They had welcomed the "pale faces" to the "land of the setting sun,"
and withered up before them, smitten by their crimes.

Almost destitute of tradition, their history involved in obscurity, their
broad lands filled with their unknown and nameless graves, these mighty
races have passed away; they could not pass into slavery, therefore they
must die.

At some future day a mighty voice may ask of those who have thus wronged
the Indian, "Where is now thy brother?" It is true that frequently we
arrived too late to save them as a race from degradation and dispersion;
but as they heavily tottered along to their last home, under the burden of
the woes which contact with civilization ever entails upon the aborigines,
we might have spoken to them the tidings of "peace on earth and good will
to men"--of a Saviour "who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and
immortality to light through his gospel." Far away amid the thunders of
Niagara, surrounded by a perpetual rainbow, Iris Island contains almost